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Monday, March 18, 2013

Monday night vegetarian.... extra good with fish? I don't think so!

This is the first thing that I read when I opened Bite, the food insert NZ Herald this morning:

In the paper this morning...

I read it again. Can this be possible? The recipe itself is Pan-fried polenta, ripe tomatoes and Mexican salsa, and it consists of instant polenta, fried and placed on a bed of cut tomatoes, and served with some store-bought Mexican Salsa Verde (yes, store-bought, this is what the recipe says, it even offers a brand name but I will not repeat it). The first thing that I though when reading this recipe (a part the fact that it doesn't make sense, culinary I mean) was that perhaps it was a bit low on protein (and taste) and thus a sub-editor (or the editor, or the writer, or a supermarket nutritionist, or a passing fishmonger...) decided that it needed to be paired not with beans (the obvious choice for polenta) but with freshly cooked fish fillets. Or maybe they thought that this was a side dish and they didn't know that it was going into the "Monday night vegetarian" section? After all in the digital version it doesn't mention the word vegetarian (and it comes with a supermarket sponsored video on how to fillet a fish!). Or maybe the word vegetarian was just a (big) typo?

Screen shot of the recipe from http://foodhub.co.nz

It isn't the first time that the same magazine writes stupid (yes stupid) things in regards to vegetarian food. It all comes down to the fact that, regardless of how many improvements there have been towards accepting vegetarians, we are still dished up recipes like the above one. It is time that publications either employ vegetarians to write their vegetarian recipes, or the existing food writers/editors/sub/nutritionists/chefs etc. learn a bit more about the world.

I guess that it was vegetarian (maybe even vegan, depends on what is in the store-bought Mexican salsa verde) before they suggested that it would be good with fish. It is like saying "Monday night kosher, this is extra good served with bacon!" Can only laugh!

As you know, I'm not a strict vegetarian, but I do prefer to eat vegetarian most of the time. I also find that article bizarre on a number of levels - mind you, I do know that quite a number of people consider that fish is not actually meat - ?????